The Sequel to The Children of Zol

Courteous Reader. This is a story about a man and a cast of strange characters who find themselves caught in an adventure mystery.

For reference, the hero of the story is the alleged author of The Children of Zol which is a Novella about a culture of people who have become addicted to their electronic devices. The Children of Zol can be accessed by following the link on the right or by clicking here.

Many thanks for reading!



Friday 21 January 2011

Chapter Eleven. Koan of a Different Color


Koan of a Different Color

Long, the stillness in the room stayed. After the wheel had come to a stop with the black marble in the white hole and the white marble in the black one, it seemed to paralyze the moment. All stood still. Derby wondered who would break the silence.

As for him, he sat motionless. "So a black mouse swallowed a white marble which now sits in a black hole...what does it all mean?," he wondered to himself.

Opie was fidgeting and finally got Derby's attention. Derby's brow wrinkled as he tried to understand the signal Opie was sending him. Opie was wiping his hands together like he was washing them, except they were at his mouth. And his head bobbed up and down. He seemed to be motioning that Derby should immitate him licking his hands and he cast his glance toward Umpa and Bai Ling. "Do it for them to see," he seemed to be saying.

"Act like a cat. Act like a cat," Derby reminded himself.

And so he did. First he got down on his hands and knees and bowed his back up in the air. Then he sat back down and ridiculously made the motion of wiping his hands with his tongue and proceeded to go through the steps of a cat cleaning behind its ears. Next he raised his arm and acted like he was licking his arm pit. He tried to lift his foot with his hand to see if he could scratch his ear with his toe, but that proved to require more agility than he had. Still the total awkwardness of his attempt was pretty embarrassing.

"What ARE you doing?," Ompa finally asked. "Have you gone mad?"

"Act like a cat. Act like a cat," Derby kept thinking to himself. He put his hands between his feet and and his butt on the floor. "I think I look more like a frog," he thought to himself. He watched with fear as the laughing Buddha approached him. Umpa's big belly hung out of his shirt. Derby noticed he was wearing flip flops and wrinkled shorts. His biceps were as big as Opie's waist.

"What's he going to do," Derby wondered as Umpa continued to move close to him. Then WHAP. Derby was on the floor from the slap of Umpa's mighty swing.

"Stop that," demanded Umpa. You look like some kind of embicile. "Now get up. Grab your balls. I have to show you something."

Derby gave Opie a mean stare. Opie was on the floor, besides himself with silent laughter. Bai Ling seemed to enjoy the humor of the moment as well.

As Derby stood up, he was squinting and rubbing his jaw. "That hurt. I don't think that was totally necessary."

Just as he said that, without a hint of warning, Umpa's fat left palm slapped Derby on the other cheek.

"Wake up Ripley. What is the sound of one hand slapping?," spoke the flip-flop-bedecked fat man.

Derby was about to complain again about the pain when he felt the wind of one thousand tornadoes blow through his brain. He saw, in slow motion, the naked energy of the whole world swirling inside himself. Then as if he was invisible, he felt as if he were pulled into the cells of all matter outside of his being.

Nothing separated him from everything else and for the split second of that episode, he couldn't for the life of him, imagine ever having fear or anxiety again. He loved. He even thought to himself how there wasn't a thing to love because there was no thing. There was only love. There was NO thing! He said it to himself, "There is NO thing!," and he felt like laughing.

He noticed the others in the room and nothing had changed as far as he could tell, in the arrangement or order of the universe, except that he was missing from it, or it was missing from him, or "what is it about this?" he thought to himself...but he was utterly content. He didn't feel the pull or push of anything. And this wasn't a state of bliss, or at least he always thought bliss would be different and more spectacular. But THIS was just exactly the same as before, except there was NO thing!

He glided over to the wheel and removed the marbles and he held them up to Umpa.

The slow steady hoooooooo of Umpa's breath blew across the white and black marbles.

"Coo-O!," said Opie. "Wed Dwagon bwowing on Mistuh Wink-o's baws!"

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